Is Scarlet Street (1945) public domain?
The copyright record for this film, written out in full so you can check it.
Public domain in the United States
What is usually said
Public domain — Universal never renewed it.
The finding, and the working behind it
Public domain in the United States: registered LP30 in 1945, and Universal renewed the registration one number below it and not this one.
This is the cleanest result in either research pass. The renewal register for 1945-registered films runs L26, L27, L28, L29, then a gap where 30 would be, then L31, L32, L33, L34.
The two immediate neighbors are not obscure. L29 is Gun Town, a photoplay in 6 reels by Universal Pictures Co., (C) 29 November 1945, renewed by Universal Pictures. L31 is Life with Blondie, a photoplay in 7 reels by Columbia Pictures Corp., (C) 13 December 1945, renewed 8 January 1973 as R543069.
So Universal renewed the registration one number below Scarlet Street and did not renew Scarlet Street. There is no Diana Productions renewal and no Walter Wanger renewal in either volume either, which closes the other two names it could have been filed under.
Underneath the film: the French novel and play La Chienne by Georges de la Fouchardiere with Mouezy-Eon, dating to 1930 and long expired on age. Renoir’s 1931 La Chienne is a separate film and nothing derived from it should be touched.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP30, (C) Universal Pictures Co., Inc., 28 December 1945
- Production
- A Diana Productions picture presented by Walter Wanger, directed by Fritz Lang
- Renewal fell due
- 1973–1974
- Renewal found
- none, under any of the three names
- Searched
- 2026-09-01
How to check this yourself
Everything above is drawn from public records. None of it requires our word:
- The Catalog of Copyright Entries, the Copyright Office’s printed registration and renewal volumes, scanned and searchable at the Internet Archive and at the Online Books Page. Registration numbers beginning LP or MP are film entries.
- The Copyright Office online records at copyright.gov, which are complete from 1978 and therefore decisive for any renewal that fell due from then on.
- The NFPF Field Guide to Sponsored Films, for the industrial and educational titles, which records copyright status entry by entry.
Where these numbers came from
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures 1973 and 1974, read for the renewal sequence around L30.
What this does and does not mean
This is a finding about United States copyright, made in good faith from the public record. Copyright terms differ by country, and a film in the public domain here may still be protected elsewhere.
A negative search proves that no record was found, which is not identical to proving that no record exists. The Copyright Office says as much about its own catalogs. Where a search could not be decisive we say so above rather than rounding it up to certainty.
This is a record of research and not legal advice. If you hold a right in this film, or you think we have read the record wrong, write to mike@tapeterritory.com with what we missed and we will correct it here.
Watch it
Scarlet Street (1945) is free to watch here, with no account and no advertising.
Why we did this research
Establishing what may be published is the first step before restoring a film and writing an audio description for it. That is what this site is for, and we do the same work on commission — audio description and captioning, with published rates.